If it's March, and you want to know whether a Lafitte angler had good fishing conditions, all you have to do is look at his hands.

An inexperienced, unsuccessful angler might blame his light ice chest on a relentless wind, but if his hands are covered with gnat bites, you know he's lying.

At the end of a Monday trip, Capt. Kevin Martin's hands looked like he had a horrific case of the measles.

Fortunately, though, he didn't have to make up any stories about inclement weather or unfavorable conditions. His ice chest was jam-packed with keeper speckled trout.

Martin pushed away from the Bourgeois Fishing Charters dock in the morning just as the sun was beginning to add a few white pixels to the coal black sky. Not a single star could be seen through the heavy overcast.

He flipped on his running lights, and jumped up on plane to scoot down the Barataria Waterway. That was Point A.

Point B was Coffee Bay and its surrounding marshes. Martin had a decent trip there on Saturday, and was hoping for at least a comparable level of success on Monday.

"The wind blew hard (Sunday), but it was out of the south," Martin said over the hum of a Mercury 250. "The shoreline I want to fish is protected on a south wind, so the water should still be clean in there."

He turned off the Barataria Waterway and into Bayou Rigolettes. The water was perfectly flat-calm, and on the southern horizon, it was impossible to tell where the ever-widening bayou ended and the heavy sky began.

"What a perfect morning," Martin said. "You know that wind's going to blow, but hopefully we'll have a little while with it calm."

Martin slipped through the Harvey Cutoff at the southern end of the Rigolettes, and entered Turtle Bay. A wind with any south or west in it would have slapped his hull with roiling white caps, but Turtle Bay was calmer than a top-shelf library book.

The Lafitte native didn't even have to finger his trim-tab controls. He ran straight across Turtle Bay, skimmed over Little Lake and settled along the southern shoreline of Coffee Bay. He jumped up on the bow, lowered his trolling motor, and couldn't hide a smile.

"The water's beautiful," he said.

It was unmistakably true. A soft-plastic lowered beneath the surface wouldn't disappear in the tannic stain of the water until at least 2 feet down. But it was still hard to believe. Local anglers know how capricious the wind has been lately, blowing from any point on the compass on any given day. Sometimes all over the compass on the same day.

Martin, though, pays particular attention to wind direction every day, and targets only areas he knows have been protected.

"Clean water is the key this time of year," he said. "If the water's dirty, you can throw dead shrimp along the shoreline and catch some redfish, a few drum and sheepshead, but you're not going to catch many trout."

That means anglers who want to have consistent success should study conditions leading up to the day of their trip. That's easier to do now than ever with the buoys the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has installed across the coast. Some provide only limited data like water height or temperature, but others include wind speed and direction.

One of Martin's guests for the day was Oregon's Christy Harshman, who knows a lot more about catching Pacific salmon than Bayou State redfish. The guide set her up with a shrimp-tipped Bomber Mud Minnow under a cork, and instructed her to cast toward the shoreline.

He and his other guest, John Deutschman of Baton Rouge, cast glow/chartreuse and black/chartreuse Mud Minnows on the other side of the boat away from the bank, hoping for speckled trout.

They wouldn't have to wait long. Within five minutes, Martin's tight-lined bait was smashed by a keeper trout, and Deutschman's cork plunged immediately after. Their next casts had similar results, and Harshman added a stout sheepshead and bull redfish to the box.

The fast action took their minds off the swarms of gnats that were eating their necks, ears and hands for lunch. This time of year, anglers will have either wind or gnats, and given the choice, most will happily select gnats.

Many of the fish the anglers caught hit the Mud Minnows, but the fish also found a bone-colored topwater Badonk-A-Donk irresistible. They were slurping it, smashing it and slapping it out of the water.

It was a good sign of things to come. The spring patterns are emerging, and Martin is glad to be kissing winter goodbye.

"The topwater action is just starting now, but it'll last throughout the summer," he said. "We've also started seeing a few birds in Barataria Bay, maybe 25 to 50 in a pile. Usually, the end of April, early May is when you see your best bird action."

The gulls are diving on small brown shrimp, Martin said, and the fish under them have been on the small side. The bigger trout are still feeding on mullet, pogies and other baitfish.

Water temperatures during Monday's trip were in the mid 60s, but they've been steadily climbing after spending most of the last month in the mid to upper 50s. The best fishing will be when water temperatures reach the 70s, Martin said.

When that happens, the grass beds will resume their annual growth, which will aid with water clarity.